The barman and a few customers stood watching a large TV screen showing pictures of the waterfront. Through the windows you could see the same cityscape, the buildings gray-brown in the smoke. I chose a table near the door, away from the television, facing Vee.

Jo sat opposite me. “Please tell me I didn’t just see my goddaughter pickaxing a guy to death.”

“It’s a game. Tell me about Edvard . . .”

“Yeah, Edvard,” said Jo, serious again. “Edvard is having a really shitty day. He spent the afternoon trying to scramble the police helicopter. They have three pilots, and guess what? One pilot’s with his family in the Arctic, one can’t be contacted by phone, one is with her family on Tenerife.”

“Wow,” I said.

“I realize you think this country is some kind of safe space where nothing ever goes wrong, but Edvard can’t track down a helicopter pilot because it’s Midsummer, and everyone deserves to be with their family on Midsummer. I mean, why aren’t you satirizing that?”

Through the doorway I could see Elsa, sitting talking intimately to Hedda. She must have felt my eyes on her; she looked up, then away. There was something furtive about her glance now, something very different from the way she had looked at me earlier, as if talking to Hedda made my wife love me less.

“Cal, mate?” Jo was staring at me.

“Sorry. Yes.” Elsa had turned in her chair. She was facing away from me. I looked at Jo. “I think maybe Edvard should speak to a journalist.”

“You have news connections. Edvard likes you, Cal. He’d prefer to speak to you.”

Cheers from all around. They were announcing it now: no one had been killed in the bomb.

I stood at the far end of the pontoon, earpiece in. “Patching you through to Carly in the studio.” A click, and I could hear the studio feed. Carly’s voice was clear and strong.

“Back to that explosion in Oslo, Norway, and to eyewitness Cal Curtis, whose family experienced these traumatic events at close hand. Cal, everyone here is delighted that your family is safe.”

“Thank you. And yes, you can almost feel the country breathing a collective sigh of relief. Sources close to the police tell us that not a single person lost their life in what looked, at one point, to be a major terrorist incident. The town hall bomb appears to have been something of a damp squib, an act of spectacle terrorism on a building where no one was working, though it does raise important questions as to the level of preparedness of this proud little Scandinavian nation.”

“Thank you, Cal Curtis in Oslo.”

I took off the headset, looked out across the bay. The entire city was shrouded in smoke and dust. Terrifying, but strangely beautiful, cut by heavy shafts of sunlight.

A voice shouted. “Cal!”

I turned. Hedda, framed in the light of the bar.